Seventeen Ugandan artists are featured in this compilation of contemporary Ugandan aritsts. A brief introductory essay discusses Ugandan artists in the post-war renaissance and the origins of the modern art movement in Uganda.

Margaret Trowell is the seminal figure in the foundation of the school of art at Makerere University that now bears her name. She is also the central figure in this dissertation, which investigates the history of art at Makerere from the precursor days of the 1930s up to the 1990s. Sanyal situates this history within the colonial context, its missionary impulses, and its (now regarded as racist) attitudes about Africans and about their abilities to make art. The author frames the narrative as two generations, dividing roughly at 1970. The decades of the 1950s and 1960s were ones of growth and optimism, but the reputation of the Makerere school of art declined in the 1970s and 1980s. This divide also marked the decrease of European instructors at Makerere and the decrease of non-Ugandan students (attributed to the political upheavals in Uganda from the 1970s). By the 1990s, a certain rejuvenating spirit emerged and a more international outlook characterized the Makerere artists.

Woven through the narrative are the artists singled out to exemplify changing Makerere style, content, and iconography. Among those highlighted in the earlier period are Gregory Maloba, Sam Ntiro, Elimo Njau, James Bukhala, Severino Matti (Sudan), Berlings Kaunda (Malawi), Theophilus Tabbaro, Muhammed Kamulegeya, and Peter Mulindwa. The three key faculty artists after Trowell were Cecil Todd, Jonathan Kingdon and Ali Darwish.